Free Republic

Saudi Arabia on Saturday executed 81 people convicted of crimes ranging from killings to belonging to militant groups, the largest known mass execution carried out in the kingdom in its modern history. The number of executed surpassed even the toll of a January 1980 mass execution for the 63 militants convicted of seizing the Grand Mosque in Mecca in 1979, the worst-ever militant attack to target the kingdom and Islam's holiest site. It wasn't clear why the kingdom choose Saturday for the executions, though they came as much of the world's attention remained focused on Russia's war on Ukraine —...

The large town of Ostfildern in the district of Esslingen near Stuttgart in Germany issued a “general decree” on January 26, 2022, according to which peaceful walkers can now also be shot if they take part in protests against the leftwing government's Corona measures.In order to ensure that the ban on assembly in Germany is observed, the use of direct coercion, i.e. physical violence or the use of weapons, have been ordered. After weighing up the conflicting interests, this is “proportionate and necessary” because there are no other means that would discourage potential anti-vaccine participants from walking, the decree states.This...

Japan hanged three death-row inmates on Tuesday, its first executions in two years, amid growing criticism by human rights groups of the country's use of the death penalty. One of the three, Yasutaka Fujishiro, was convicted of killing seven people and setting fire to their house in 2004, while the other two, Tomoaki Takanezawa and Mitsunori Onogawa, were convicted in the 2003 killings of two pinball parlor employees. Executions are carried out in high secrecy in Japan, where prisoners are not informed of their fate until the morning they are hanged. Two death-row inmates recently filed a lawsuit against the...

An event horribly underscoring the heartlessness of the brass against frail flesh in their ghastly war of machines, this shooting succeeded a surprise German attack on November 27 whose short-lived push into the French line momentarily drove part of the 298th Regiment to fall back out of their forward trench, before the French rallied and retook their own position to restore the status quo ante. The whole back-and-forth spanned mere minutes — just another snapshot of the trench war stalemate that would become so grindingly familiar to all belligerents in the years ahead. French commanders in the earliest months of...

The secret US Army operation to dispose of the bodies of the war criminals executed at Nuremberg.Nuremberg Executions 1946 - What Happened to the Bodies? 10mins

The Taliban executed some 900 people in six weeks in just one province as its fighters overran government troops, a police chief has claimed Targets included police officers, tribal elders, civil activists, and even a popular comedian who were dragged from their homes and killed in southern Kandahar province, the region's former head of police Tadin Khan said. Islamist fighters have now recaptured much of the province and have laid siege to the regional capital - also named Kandahar - as they push to retake control of the country following US troop withdrawal.

The South Carolina House of Representatives passed a bill Wednesday that allows for firing squads to carry out death penalty sentences and makes electrocution a more likely means of execution.Difficulties finding the required drugs have essentially paused executions in many states. The bill changes the default method of execution to electrocution if lethal injections cannot be given.

The U.S. Department of Justice held a news conference Tuesday with acting U.S. Attorney Michael Sherwin and FBI Washington Field Office ADIC Steven D'Antuono discussing charges and arrests made in connection with last Wednesday's riot at the U.S. Capitol by Trump supporters. According to the DOJ officials, there are more than 170 active subject files seeking individuals identified as potential persons that committed crimes, a number that is expected to swell into the "hundreds" in coming weeks. The DOJ has launched investigations into serious felony charges of "sedition and conspiracy," as well as a "mind-blowing" number of crimes related to...

The crime for which Lisa Montgomery was sentenced to death is about as horrific as one can imagine. In December 2004, she strangled a pregnant dog breeder, Bobbie Jo Stinnett, having pretended to be interested in buying one of her puppies, and used a kitchen knife to cut her baby out of her belly, whom she then passed off as her own. Montgomery had told friends and family she was pregnant, but was arrested a day later and the baby girl was returned alive and healthy to the victim’s husband. One might well conclude that no woman in her right...

Attorney General William P. Barr today directed the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) to schedule the executions of four federal death-row inmates who were convicted of murdering children in violation of federal law and who, in two cases, raped the children they murdered. In July 2019, Attorney General Barr directed the BOP to revise the Federal Execution Protocol to provide for the use of a single-drug, pentobarbital — similar to protocols used in hundreds of state executions and repeatedly upheld by federal courts, including the Supreme Court, as consistent with the Eighth Amendment. A district court’s preliminary injunction prevented BOP...

Doctors across the country are deciding whether to adopt standard policies for not resuscitating patients with coronavirus in an effort to curb possible virus exposure for medical staff. In Chicago, the Northwestern Memorial Hospital has been debating how to implement a universal do-not-resuscitate policy for infected patients. The policy would void the wishes of the patient or their family members. The death toll for Covid-19 in the United States has risen to 823 with more than 60,000 confirmed cases, and the burden of the pandemic continues to intensify in hospitals across the country. ... Similar discussions around not resuscitating have...

Two executions have been postponed in Texas this month, and it's possible the coronavirus pandemic could disrupt several more, which one expert says could reduce the dwindling support for the death penalty in the United States. With many non-essential public spaces shut down to try to contain the virus' spread, lawyers for two condemned men sought and received 60-day stays of execution. The Court of Criminal Appeals approved the stays for John Hummel on Monday and Tracy Beatty on Thursday. They were on the schedule to be executed March 18 and March 25, respectively. Robert Dunham, director of the Washington,...

There were no champagne corks popping, no crystal balls dropping in Wang Yi's new year. The pastor of Early Rain Covenant Church was in prison, spending his second January 1st in a dark cell, charged with a crime Americans commit every day: worshipping Jesus. The actual allegations were much more subtle -- things like "illegal business activities" or "inciting subversion of state power." But in China, government officials need no excuse. Christians, like Uyghurs, Falun Gong, and any other men and women of faith, are fair game. "Where are you taking my husband?" a woman pleads on a cell phone...

A federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., on Monday denied the Justice Department's efforts to lift a temporary halt on four federal executions. The department had appealed a trial judge's ruling last month that ordered a stay of the executions while a separate legal challenge to the Trump administration's new lethal injection protocol plays out. The longest running of the four lawsuits was filed 16 years ago, and the cases went dormant during the Obama administration amid a shortage of lethal injection drugs. The first of the four executions was set for December 9. The only other federal death row...

Attorney General William Barr revealed Thursday he'd be willing to take the administration's fight to restart federal executions to the Supreme Court if necessary. Barr's comments to The Associated Press came after U.S. District Judge Tanya S. Chutkan ruled Thursday to postpone four of five scheduled executions for next month; the fifth already had been halted. The Trump administration appealed the decision. The government has put to death only three defendants since restoring the federal death penalty in 1988, most recently in 2003, when Louis Jones was executed for the 1995 kidnapping, rape and murder of a young soldier.

President Trump addressed the nation Monday morning after two evil cowards carried out separate mass shootings over the weekend. During his remarks, the President called for action and issued a number of proposals and directives. 1) He's calling on the DOJ and FBI to investigate white supremecy and other forms of hate or terrorism on the internet, with help from social media companies.“The shooter in El Paso posted a manifesto online consumed by racist hate. In one voice, our nation must condemn racism, bigotry and white supremacy. These sinister ideologies must be defeated. Hate has no place in America – hatred...

(PHNOM PENH, Cambodia) — Nuon Chea, the chief ideologue of the communist Khmer Rouge regime that destroyed a generation of Cambodians, died Sunday, the country’s U.N.-assisted genocide tribunal said. He was 93. Nuon Chea was known as Brother No. 2, the right-hand man of Pol Pot, the leader of the regime that ruled Cambodia from 1975 to 1979. The group’s fanatical efforts to realize a utopian society led to the death of some 1.7 million people — more than a quarter of the country’s population at the time — from starvation, disease, overwork and executions. Researchers believe Nuon Chea was...

No one on federal death row has been executed since 2003, but on Thursday, William P. Barr, the attorney general, announced that the government was resuming executions, starting with five men convicted of killing children. The men, whose ages range from 37 to 67, have each been convicted of heinous crimes, and together have been involved in the slayings of 13 victims. The cases fell under federal jurisdiction because of how or where they were carried out. All five are being held at a high-security federal prison in Terre Haute, Ind., where their executions are set for December and January....

Zheng Qiaozhi — we will call him George — still has nightmares. He was interning at China’s Shenyang Army General Hospital when he was drafted to be part of an organ-harvesting team. The prisoner was brought in, tied hand and foot, but very much alive. The army doctor in charge sliced him open from chest to belly button and exposed his two kidneys. “Cut the veins and arteries,” he told his shocked intern. George did as he was told. Blood spurted everywhere. The kidneys were placed in an organ-transplant container. Then the doctor ordered George to remove the man’s eyeballs....

In one of the most painfully awkward interviews in recent memory, progressive author Naomi Wolf appeared on the BBC 3 to promote her upcoming book, Outrages: Sex, Censorship, and the Criminalization of Love — only to be informed by the interviewer that her soon-to-be-released work is entirely based on Wolf’s own misunderstanding of a dated legal term ..... During a radio interview with the BBC’s Matthew Sweet yesterday, Wolf — as well as the rest of the world — found out that her new book is wildly fallacious. The interview quickly went viral. “I found several dozen executions,” Wolf said...